• Question: How did you become a scientist?

    Asked by anon-193080 to Morwenna, Jamal, iainstaniland, Heidi, Emma, Carl on 2 Nov 2018. This question was also asked by anon-193364.
    • Photo: Iain Staniland

      Iain Staniland answered on 2 Nov 2018:

      By being too scared to leave education?
      Well actually it was really as simple as I was good at, and enjoyed, biology when I was at school and wanted to do more of it. I loved discovering things and finding out how things worked. I was fascinated by the sea, despite growing up very much land-locked in Leicester, so it seemed natural to study Marine Biology.
      During my degree I really enjoyed the research project we had to do in our third year (I studied how hermit crabs fight over swapping shells) so that when I finished, doing a research PhD (On fish feeding behaviour) was the obvious next step.

    • Photo: Carl Heron

      Carl Heron answered on 2 Nov 2018:

      I could not decide whether to concentrate on the humanities or sciences at school so I combined them by doing History, Chemistry and Biology for my A-levels. I then applied for a university degree in Archaeological Sciences – merging scientific investigation and the study of people in the past. I’ve been doing that for the past 30+ years. OMG…..is it that long since I left university?

    • Photo: Emma Crawford

      Emma Crawford answered on 2 Nov 2018:

      I’d always enjoyed Maths and Science at school as far back as I can remember! I remember being in Math club at primary school – total geek I know! :p

      Fortunately I ended up being quite good at Maths, being in one of the top sets for my GCSES which meant I did GCSE Maths in Year 10 and GCSE Statistics in Year 11 before continuing with Maths and Further Maths at 6th Form as well as Chemistry.

      I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to do when I left school so I decided to go to university and study Maths as it was my best subject. After 2 years at university, I did a 12-month work placement as part of my degree meaning I did 4 years instead of 3. My placement was at a pharmaceutical company (company that makes drugs), and I really enjoyed my work there! So much so I asked my colleagues what I needed to do to come back!

      They told me with my undergraduate degree I should continue and do a masters in Medical Statistics, which I did. It was a statistics degree but all the examples we worked on was related to data used in the medical industry and I also learned some specialist analysis techniques that are relevant to medical and healthcare data. After I finished I got my first job in a small company that worked as consultants for the large pharmaceutical companies. I’m doing a similar role now but in a much larger company that requires me to work with other scientists in different departments like doctors etc.

      And that’s how I became a statistical scientist! 🙂

    • Photo: Heidi Gardner

      Heidi Gardner answered on 2 Nov 2018:

      I was never ready to stop learning. I sailed through my GCSEs but then found my A levels really, really difficult, and there were points when I felt like giving up on education and going to get a ‘proper job’ – now I’m so glad I didn’t do that! I always had questions; I was that annoying person always asking ‘why?’, so being a scientist was quite a natural thing for me.
      Once I got to university for my undergraduate degree I loved finding out things that not many people knew, like when I was in the lab doing research work I was literally the first person in the world to find out some of the stuff that I was doing. I found that super exciting and that made it clear that scientific research was what I wanted to do for a career.

    • Photo: Jamal Kinsella

      Jamal Kinsella answered on 5 Nov 2018:

      I always enjoyed Psychology as a subject in sixth form college (from when I was 16) and my interest was picked up by very supportive teachers of mine who recommended I consider a job in science. I got on a program to do research at Manchester University when I was 16 and met some amazing people, including Dr Andrew Stewart, a psychology of language researcher, who became my mentor.

      I continued to enjoy research as I studied for my university degrees and beyond, and find that it is often filled with diverse and accepting people, so I haven’t left it just yet!

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